Meant to Be
by venus42a6
Summary: In which Cavendish and Dakota are, in fact, vampire hunters. TW for graphic violence.
1. Chapter 1

Considering how fast the world had gone from a sunny era of progress and hope to a post-apocalyptic war zone, Balthazar was astounded that he truly could not say when it had all started.

Weeks ago, there had been a few rumors, some strange disappearances down in Florida. But people were always disappearing in Florida, so Balthazar had paid the rumors little mind. He had more important things to worry about as a physics student, such as the ambitious paper about potential mechanisms for time travel in order to convince a dubious professor. Balthazar had always enjoyed the thought of time travel and trying to puzzle out the paradoxes that came with it, and to be fair, growing up as a fan of Doctor Zone had likely contributed to this fascination. The show was from his native Britain; what could he say?

 _Did Britain look anything like America now did? How would Balthazar ever know?_

Soon it was more than rumors. The media were on it, covering the overnight conversions of small, cheery towns to desolate shells with none of the original inhabitants left. Yet they still wouldn't explain why, and after all, small towns full of uncultured hillbillies were prone to disaster. Places like the University of Danville were safe pillars of innovation, where mysteries were solved inside of two days and any problems were dealt with by tightened security.

 _Where had all the security guards gone when it counted?_

And soon it became painfully clear what was happening, and the whole country fell into chaos, with no telling when _they_ might decide to descend on an unsuspecting neighborhood, thirsty for their next meal. Some people brandished guns, some huddled in prayer, some demanded increased defense spending from their government. None of this had done the least to quell the onslaught. Even quitting school in favor of the secure retreat of the Cavendish Countryside Manor proved futile.

The vampires had come for them all the same.

His mother. His father. Their butler and their maid.

Balthazar alone had made it out alive and intact.

But now he was cornered, and had been for days. Thanks to the enormous decorative cross Mrs. Cavendish had bought on a whim at an antique show, the vampires were blocked from the only entrance to the cellar, while Balthazar cowered and lived off of vintage wine, heirloom apples, and cheese. His head buzzed and his stomach churned from such a diet, but he was alive, and fed.

Unlike the vampires outside, who only grew hungrier. Why wouldn't they just leave already?

 _Why wouldn't he just leave already?_

Balthazar shook, and he realized he was sobbing—from fear, from drunkenness, from grief; who even knew?

All he knew was that every scratch from above, every bit of howling, every feral snarl from a being who had once harbored a human soul, he loathed _them_ more and more and more.

But more than that, he loathed being alone.

For all he knew, Balthazar was the last human alive. He couldn't build a time machine and stop it all from happening; he couldn't even build a solid weapon to get out of that cellar. And the temperature was dropping, and he would have given anything for a warm body to hold against his as the gusts of night air reminded him that things were only about to become worse.

And worse they became.

Tonight was a hundred times harsher than usual. Tonight there wasn't just generic noisemaking and predatory drooling and hissing.

Tonight there was screaming.

It sounded like flesh being torn away from bone, like somehow the creatures of the night had managed to make another kill and bring it back simply for the sake of taunting Balthazar.

Except some of the screaming was in English.

Probably.

The tones and inflections sounded like English to Balthazar, like angry yelling in a Bostonian accent, but that was nonsense, wasn't it? If the vampires could talk, surely by now they would have collaborated to formulate a strategy to forcibly dislodge Balthazar from his sanctuary.

Or, perhaps, that was exactly what they were doing now.

Some more tearing, some more bloodcurdling shouting.

Then it all went away.

And then the door opened.

Balthazar jumped behind the nearest barrel. Had they managed to remove the cross, finally, or grit their teeth to get past it anyway? Had they seen him? Could they smell him?

"Hello? Hello?" a voice called.

Balthazar peered out anxiously, and was met with a sight unlike that of any vampire he had seen yet.

It was a brunette man in a track suit, sunglasses on despite it being after sundown. He was tan, certainly darker than Balthazar himself, but that was still no guarantee of humanity. Perhaps he had simply had very dark skin to begin with.

"Hey look, if you're down here just come out already, it'll make this easier," the brunette man said in a commanding voice. He took off his jacket, revealing a white tank top that didn't quite conceal a firmly toned abdomen and showed off biceps that had clearly seen a lot of use lately.

Balthazar's breath caught, and he felt the full impact of every bottle of wine he had drunk down here hit all at once.

He fell over, rolled across the floor, and landed at the brunette man's feet.

Balthazar tried to get up, but the room was spinning now. He started to crabwalk away, but he didn't even have the balance to keep that up.

This was how he would die.

"Hey hey hey now, easy there," the brunette man assured him. "Look, you're safe now, and if you wanna leave this dingy dungeon, I got your back."

"Of my neck?" Balthazar quipped back crossly. "How do I know I can trust you?"

"Look, if I was a vamp I'd've eaten you by now already. My name's Vinnie, Vinnie Dakota. I knew with that many vampires outside, there had to be a human in here somewhere."

"Cavendish. Er, Balthazar Cavendish. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Dakota." The formalities tumbled easily and swiftly out of his mouth thanks to years of upbringing and sheer habit.

"Look, you want more room than this tonight? We gotta secure the border before more get here." Dakota turned back to the stairs and beckoned for Balthazar to follow, swooping down to help him up as he staggered. Finally, seeing that Balthazar was in no condition to make the ascent himself, Dakota tossed one of Balthazar's arms over his own shoulder and allowed the taller man to lean against him for support.

"Whatever did you mean, 'more'? Were there not enough?"

"Where their own kind die, more come back if you aren't careful."

"But what would have killed them?" Those menaces were strong, swift, and cruel. Surely they had no natural predators.

Dakota grinned smugly as he thrust open the door at the top of the stairs.

The parlor was in unrecognizable disarray, with bloodstains and broken furniture and…

"Bodies," whispered Balthazar in awe and terror. For indeed, nearly a dozen of those cruel, pale faces lay dead, eyes frozen open, fangs forever descended.

Nearly all of them had a wooden stake thrust through the left side of their chest.

"You're welcome!"


	2. Chapter 2

What transpired shortly thereafter, Balthazar knew, would never have happened had he met Dakota under different circumstances, in part because under different circumstances he never would've met Dakota in the first place.

The man was no blue blood, that was for certain. His suit was stained with powdered cheese dust, and he chugged water straight from the faucet after giving a yelp of joy to find it functional. He even encouraged Balthazar to do the same while he secured the premises, assuring him that he was adequately armed with enough holy water and powdered garlic to seal every door and window on the mansion.

"Look, you aren't really drunk, I can tell, but you're dehydrated and you need to recover. I've done this before, I can do it again."

"But Mr. Dakota, you've saved me! Surely I at least owe you a debt of gratitude. Allow me to assist—"

"You don't owe me anything. Just get back on your feet. I don't need any dead weight when I get going again."

The second it registered with Balthazar, he stepped backwards, flustered.

"You mean to take me with you?"

"Well, naturally. You can't stay here forever and it's safer if you don't travel alone. Trust me, I know." Balthazar was pretty sure he was older than Dakota, but the look that crossed the brunette's face seemed like it belonged on only the most seasoned of veterans.

"But you said you're securing the border. Shan't we be safer if we stay here?"

"Places become safe. They don't stay safe. Sooner or later, the vamps find their way in, every time. I'm just hoping this will last us long enough to figure out where we're going next."

And with that, Dakota had set about his work.

Despite his protests, Balthazar knew that Dakota was right. Hiding in a cellar for days on end had taken a lot out of him, and try as he might, he simply wasn't up to much more than lying on the couch and recuperating, pretending that the vampires' bodies weren't staring back at him as he lay down.

He didn't know how long he was asleep, but he woke up immediately once Dakota flopped down on the couch across from him, staring up at the ceiling, breathing heavily. Balthazar wasn't sure if he should continue pretending to be asleep, or ask his savior further questions, but somehow all words stuck in his throat and all he could do was stare until Dakota himself was snoring.

Mrs. Cavendish would have been appalled at Balthazar's lack of hospitality, but Dakota was clearly not concerned in the least that Balthazar hadn't offered him a drink or made up the guest room. The rules for pretty much everything had changed in the last few weeks, and now the script for social pleasantries might as well have been lying on the floor with a stake through its own heart.

Perhaps at the very least, Balthazar could prepare a better atmosphere for when Dakota awoke.

The first sunbeams of morning were flooding through the gaps in the curtains, but Balthazar did not open them. Instead, cringing as he did so, he scooped his arms underneath those of the nearest corpse and dragged it to the entrance to the cellar, pulling it down with him and tossing it behind an empty barrel.

He did the same with the next vampire, and the next, and the next, astounded that the noise didn't wake up his houseguest. When he had left the last of the monsters downstairs, he fastened the padlock and dropped the key down the drain in the washroom.

He knew he would never want to go down there again.

So now, only now, Balthazar allowed himself to sit beside Dakota on the couch, marveling at the way the man next to him could be so calm. Those muscles had relaxed entirely, and he was smiling innocently, as though he hadn't slaughtered a house full of vampires within the last twenty-four hours.

Did he do this all the time?

How long had he been on the run from the vampires?

Were there others like him?

What was his life like before? Did Dakota, like Balthazar, have ambitions of his own that had been torn apart by this apocalypse? Had he initially attempted to flee the onslaught the way Balthazar had? Or was he just that brave that he took it upon himself to save the world the moment it was in peril?

In any case, what lay before Balthazar was a better man than he was.

Did he dare?

Yes. He dared.

Balthazar inched his way closer, feeling Dakota's breath on his skin. He clasped the dormant man's hand in his own and squeezed it, and without waking up, Dakota squeezed back.

Balthazar stroked the back of Dakota's hand, the brown skin a relief from the nightmarishly pale faces that had come to haunt him as of late. He thought about letting go and leaving to make breakfast or something, but it just felt so good to embrace the warmth of a fellow human being for once. He could close his eyes and imagine being home again. After all, the grassy smell of morning dew still hung on the air as it always had; the velvet of the couch under him was the same as it had been since Balthazar was twelve; and were he so inclined, he could have ascended the staircase to his same old bedroom, dug out his old Doctor Zone blanket, and fallen asleep to the sound of Mozart on the little music box his grandmother had given him as a child. And same as always, the quick clattering of the maid's shoes in the kitchen—

His heart skipped when he remembered.

He no longer had a maid.

But there was no way he had imagined that sound.

He sprang into action, snatching the mesh bag with Dakota's remaining stakes and dashing back to the kitchen. He didn't know what he would find.

But there was no point in waking Dakota up to ask if he was absolutely sure he had barred any possible entryway because, clearly, he hadn't.

Mistakes happened.

Dakota didn't deserve to die from his.

Balthazar crossed the threshold into the kitchen, and stopped short. It was the maid, all right.

But she wasn't the maid.

Blood red eyes glared at him, and then that face broke into a sly, ironic smile.

"Hungry, my boy?" she mocked, and held up what remained of the butler, taking a long guzzle of blood from two well-worn holes in his neck. "You'll think much more clearly once you've had your breakfast. Except that mine is getting a little… stale." She licked at a crusty trail of clotted blood that ran down the butler's neck.

Balthazar almost threw up in the sink, but he held his ground.

He pulled out a stake…

The maid laughed. She slithered through the door at the far side of the kitchen and was gone.

This time, her feet made no noise at all.

Balthazar sprinted back to the parlor, fearing the worst.

And, indeed, the worst lay silently before his eyes. She stood above Dakota, the bloodlust consuming her face, as she leaned in on his sleeping form, her fangs glinting…

"Wake up, you dolty snack-hound!" Balthazar cried, and groggily, Dakota opened his eyes.

He moved much more quickly at the sight of the vampiress above him, who snarled in anger as she dropped, pinning him back to the couch as Dakota reached for the stakes…

…that were in Balthazar's hand.

What an idiotic maneuver. Balthazar should have left at least some of them with Dakota. But he hadn't been thinking at all.

He charged at her, stake in hand. His weight just barely managed to push her petite frame away from the sofa as he shoved a stake through her…

….not heart.

"It's to the left!" Dakota called as he stood up.

"Her left, or my left?" Balthazar tried to yank the stake away, but it was lodged in her chest pretty well. Her fangs were bared as she stood up, red eyes pulsing in anger.

If only the room weren't so dark, maybe they wouldn't look so frightening.

Except.

Why did the room have to be dark?

Balthazar ran to the window and threw open the curtains.

The maid's shriek was unbearable. Her skin seemed to radiate, white-hot, as the sunbeams induced boils across her arms, her face, her legs just above the stockings.

And then her skin melted off.

She collapsed to the floor. Something moved in Balthazar's peripheral vision—it was Dakota, driving one more stake through her chest (presumably in the correct location) for good measure.

The monster was dead.

Dakota jumped up and high-fived Balthazar. "Smooth!" he declared exuberantly. "I wasn't sure you had it in you, but that was some quick thinking for someone who's never killed a vamp before."

"I… may have made some mistakes," Balthazar lamented. Then he straightened up as he remembered. "But so did you! You should have been more careful when securing the house!"

"I was! I checked every single door and window you've got in this place, even the upstairs ones. Everything was sealed."

"But did you check to make certain no vampires were in the house already?"

Silence. Balthazar felt horrible for implying that this man was somehow stupid. After all, Dakota had spent weeks now on the run from the wraiths; he knew how to hunt. Balthazar had no idea how many other people had escaped being eaten, turned, or sieged, but it couldn't be too many. The bloodsuckers were relentless.

"Come now… let's get you a more comfortable place to sleep," Balthazar offered.

"Shouldn't we make sure there aren't any more?" Dakota questioned, his confidence broken.

Balthazar shook his head. "Our maid was the only person in the house who was turned. I'm positive that that is why she wasn't clustered with the others in front of the cellar door. She knew the house. The others didn't."

Dakota nodded.

Then he placed an arm around Balthazar's neck.

And kissed him.

Balthazar stared back at him, shocked.

But he got over it quickly enough to kiss back.

And they stood there, lips against lips, oblivious to the stench of death around them, to the sticky red residue that now clung to every surface in the room, to the question of where they would go tomorrow and the next day and the next day. There was only now, and this moment, because who knew what the future held?

Thirty minutes later found them huddled on the floor, an especially large afghan draped over them like a blanket, feeling serene for the first time since it had all started.

Balthazar could only imagine how it would've happened otherwise. He would likely have spent the better part of a year, at least, in Dakota's company, testing the waters, making absolutely certain that the man was not straight. After that, he would've courted him a bit, taken him on dates, gotten to know his family, his friends, his ambitions. And when the moment finally came, he would have booked a table at the finest restaurant in town, and bought chocolate and roses, and taken him to the luxury suite for the first time they made love.

Balthazar had been raised a gentleman, after all.

But Dakota was different. Dakota didn't want a gentleman.

Balthazar realized he was grateful for that.

And in a strange sort of way, even though he didn't have the faintest idea what might happen in the upcoming weeks or months or decades, Balthazar looked forward to them eagerly.

He squeezed his new partner tightly to his chest.

"Vinnie," he whispered, before they both surrendered to the bliss of slumber.


	3. Chapter 3

From that point on, Vinnie rarely left Balthazar's side.

The Cavendish Countryside Manor proved to be a much more effective sanctuary than most of the abandoned cars, warehouses, apartments, and offices that Vinnie had squatted in since his own hometown had been ravaged by the plague. There was a convenience store in walking distance that they could loot for supplies as necessary. They kept the vampires away with an ample supply of holy water, crosses, garlic, stakes, and good-old-fashioned sunlight, and during the daytime, they would venture outside to knock out as many sleeping ones as they could find.

Hunting became their job, and they became good at it in the months that followed.

It became routine. They would wake up in Balthazar's room, snuggled under the Dr. Zone blanket, which Vinnie found endearing for some reason. Balthazar would cook Vinnie breakfast out of whatever they might have salvaged in their most recent raid. They would hunt for however long they felt like it, and then return home for a supper of more canned goods. Vinnie would secure the border, and then they would take advantage of the Manor's in-home gym and pool to stay in shape. At least, that was the official reason for their workouts, and it was a sensible one. But Balthazar couldn't help but notice a correlation between whether he had kept his shirt on during training and the likelihood that they would enjoy a very different type of exercise afterwards.

The sex itself, pleasant as it was, didn't really mean much. It was a huge relief to have a fellow human present at all times, to remind Balthazar that he wasn't alone, but that wasn't the same as love. It was hard to know what to call their relationship, other than that of two survivors facing the world together and clinging to what they had left. There was a great deal of joy, but love was something completely different.

At least, that's what Balthazar told himself.

They were comrades. And they got along well. They kept each other safe, out of an understanding that the other would do the same.

Until the day came that Balthazar failed.

One simple misstep, one negligence to check a hollow tree before leaning against it, one delighted vampire that yanked Balthazar to his near-doom.

And then Vinnie swooped in.

"Go on!" he yelled. "Go on, I got this!"

Balthazar didn't know how Vinnie had shimmied in between him and the vampire, but he had, voluntarily entering a confined space in order to push Balthazar out of it.

Vinnie won, but it was a hard match. There were no bites, but he was bleeding badly.

"Come now, let's get you home!" Balthazar had declared anxiously. They were done hunting for the day, despite it being barely past noon.

"I'm fine, I'm all right, I… like the color red…" Vinnie had joked as he panted. Balthazar didn't find the comment funny at all.

He got his partner home and made him sit up on the kitchen counter the way a parent might do if their child had a skinned knee. He found his first-aid supplies and got straight to work.

"Why would you do such a thing, putting yourself in harm's way?" Balthazar confronted.

"I could ask you the same thing!"

"I made a mistake. I never intended to have a run-in with a vampire at such close range. But you jumped in willingly."

"Yeah, because you were in danger."

"You could have died."

"So could you!"

"You managed without me before." Balthazar put some antiseptic on a cotton ball and applied it to one of Vinnie's numerous wounds. "You'll survive without me if something happens."

Vinnie flinched as the medicine was applied. "Yeah, but I don't want to!"

Balthazar swallowed guiltily at Vinnie's reaction to the pain. "You could find another partner, Vinnie, I'm sure of it."

"But I want you… ow!"

Balthazar froze. He felt selfish for asking, but he did. "Me, specifically?"

"Yes, you specifically!"

Balthazar noticed a red stain on Vinnie's tank top. "I'll need you to remove that," he told his patient, who complied.

"Did… did you think I was only here because you were the only other person around?" Vinnie asked suddenly.

Balthazar reached out to treat a gash on Vinnie's otherwise pristine abdomen. "I cannot place the blame on you for not having choices."

"Even if I didn't have a choice, I can still tell when I've lucked out!" Vinnie insisted. He paused while Balthazar placed gauze over the wound. "Can't… can't you?"

Balthazar finished with Vinnie's torso, but did not ask him to put his shirt back on. He'd never do that. Although it made him feel like a pervert, he kept staring at Vinnie's body, wishing that instead of answering the question, he could just be holding that body to his own. But with the pain Vinnie was in, surely that would not be wise for at least a few days.

He opted to hold his hand instead.

"I don't know if I believe in 'luck' or not," Balthazar admitted. "And yet, I do know when I feel… grateful." He laughed bitterly. "Is it wrong to feel grateful for misfortune? For without misfortune, the odds of us meeting are… well, suffice it to say they're quite low." He stroked the back of Vinnie's hand in his, sending chills up both of their spines. "I love you, Vinnie. It may be selfish for me to love you given the circumstances. But I love you all the same."

Vinnie, despite the excruciating pain he must have been in, jumped into Balthazar's arms, returning the sentiment without needing to repeat it. "In that case," he said, "I can tell I've really lucked out this time!" He looked up at Balthazar. "And I'm ready to fight those vamps a hundred times over to keep that luck!"


	4. Chapter 4

Alas, the time came when the vampires in their vicinity simply became too agitated. They started throwing rocks, scratching at the walls, and even setting fires, all in an attempt to break into the abode of the humans who just wouldn't be killed. It reached a point where Vinnie and Balthazar spent more time repairing the damage than hunting the bloodsuckers.

Finally, Balthazar realized that enough was enough. If he were ever to see his childhood home intact again, he would have to leave it alone for the time being.

Vinnie understood.

Neither man felt truly prepared to find the rest of the world, or what remained of it. Yet it had to be done. Other than the occasional open field in broad daylight, very few places apart from civilization were safe enough that both men would dare sleep at once. At least when they came across a town, there was shelter, even if fortifications were only temporary. It was also necessary for securing provisions.

And, as it turned out, meeting other survivors.

Some were loners. They tended to be the least pleasant company, presumably because only the meanest could possibly survive navigating this landscape solo. Vinnie and Balthazar might partner with them temporarily when traversing a particularly dangerous region, but they would part ways as soon as the threat had been dealt with, to nobody's sorrow.

Others, like Vinnie and Balthazar, traveled in pairs. They were often the most aloof—one might brush up against them at a water source or stumble into the same bunker, but the moment it became convenient, the couples were gone. They tended to not trust anyone besides each other, and sometimes even cast suspicious glances between themselves. Balthazar hoped he and Vinnie didn't come across that way, but given Vinnie's extroverted nature and overall welcoming personality, it seemed unlikely.

And then there were teams—eclectic arrays of people who might know each other from life before the apocalypse, or else have banded together shortly thereafter out of necessity. Some were composed entirely of members of one family, or military personnel, or individuals of a similar age or economic demographic; yet it seemed that the strongest teams, the ones that stayed together the longest and had the fewest casualties, had no rhyme or reason as to who joined them—they took any cooperation they could. Now and then, Vinnie and Balthazar themselves would assimilate into one of these groups, for a few weeks or even months at a time, but inevitably, something would either persuade or force them to break away once more.

But somehow nothing ever, ever pried them away from each other.

Not even death.

Indeed, they had been roaming for two years when it happened—what the men referred to simply as the Massacre.

Balthazar's memory of the event, much like his memory of the attack on the Manor, was limited to a few concrete details. No actions, just images, like stills from a movie.

One team, twenty people.

A warehouse, full of canned nuts.

One vampire.

Fifty vampires.

Blood.

Rivers of blood.

Torn flesh.

Fourteen dismembered bodies.

Four freshly sired vampires.

Two survivors.

And death's fateful hand had willed that they should be Balthazar and Vinnie.

They had kissed, once, the second they were safe, truly and fully sure of it.

And then they didn't touch each other at all for nearly a month.

It wasn't until the night Balthazar woke up screaming at dusk that Vinnie clamped a hand over his mouth so tightly that Balthazar felt he might suffocate.

"Hey, calm down, we're low on holy water and we don't need them finding us!" Vinnie whispered desperately.

"Were… were we low on holy water before?" Balthazar asked, shaking, confused.

Vinnie didn't need any clarification. "Does… does that mean you're ready to talk about it?"

Balthazar looked away, yet proceeded to do exactly as Vinnie had asked. "They're gone… all of them. Except us. It could've been me… it should've been me… but it could've been you… and it shouldn't… it mustn't… I can't…" Balthazar let out a sob that Vinnie did not stifle.

"It happened the way it happened. No 'should' or 'shouldn't.' We were very lucky, both of us, and that's all we can say about it." Vinnie rested a hand on Balthazar's knee.

Balthazar shook his head. "One time, just once, I could allow myself to be 'lucky.' But that time already came to pass the night they came for my family and I… I just…"

"Didn't die?" Vinnie finished.

Balthazar nodded and trembled. "But… but you knew that much. And I would love to believe this is all destiny and that we were meant to survive, but to prove that means even more trials, it means you have to be in danger again, and I can't… I can't bear the thought!"

Vinnie exhaled. "Maybe," he ventured, "maybe I already proved I was meant to survive. Since I did already. Maybe the big danger is past for me."

Balthazar's teary eyes widened, and he pondered the most decorous way to ask that Vinnie elaborate. Fortunately, Vinnie had learned to read Balthazar well enough to comply without a word of prompting.

"I started running when I realized I was the only one who could. Because the others were… they were claimed." Vinnie swallowed, a tear forming in his own eye. "My family. All of them."

"Did… do you come from a large family?" As long as the couple had been together, virtually everything from before the apocalypse was a taboo topic of conversation. Balthazar didn't know anything about Vinnie's family, and Vinnie had never been told about Balthazar's studies in physics, let alone those lofty dreams of time travel that seemed even more alien now than they had when he was a student.

"Two brothers, a kid sister, my folks… and then the others."

"Others?"

"It was the Drowssap family reunion. Everyone from my mother's side was there—in-laws and cousins and uncles, even some relatives I'd never met. There must've been a hundred people. And I was the only one who got away." The tears rolled down Vinnie's dark cheeks now. "There were children there, and I couldn't save them. There wasn't time. The second the sun went down, they were there, and I got away, and I've been running ever since."

Balthazar threw his arms around Vinnie, his sobs on his partner's shoulders, his partner's sobs on his own shoulders. They must have sat that way for nearly an hour, until Vinnie spoke again.

"It was cruel of fate to let me live once. But if fate let me live again, then maybe there's a reason. A reason like… like you and me."

Balthazar couldn't deny that that sounded like a wonderful thought—the mechanisms of the universe aligning just so that he and Vinnie could come together, could stay together. But there was still that nagging doubt, that sense that it was all too good to be true. "But this 'fate'… if it is a good thing," he questioned timidly, "then why would it use such terrible mechanisms? Why couldn't it have brought us together in some pleasant way, like on a beach or at the cinema?"

Vinnie sighed. "I have no idea. I was a history major, you know."

Balthazar startled at the nonsequitor, until Vinnie continued.

"There's been some rotten crap in the last couple centuries. Like worse than the rest of history. Pretty much everything that happened after 1806."

Balthazar shuddered. The Mississippi Purchase was such a notoriously dark chapter in human history that even his school in Britain had felt the need to educate him about it at a very young age, lest such a tragedy repeat itself. The senseless violence that had transpired in the fallout was indeed nearly enough to rival the situation at hand.

Nearly.

"Do you ever get the sense that maybe it wasn't, you know, supposed to happen?" Vinnie ventured. "And neither was this?"

"But it did happen. And this happened. The hands of fate." Balthazar stood up and gestured behind him, in front of him, everywhere.

"Ever wonder if there's a way to change that? That is… time travel?"

Balthazar struggled to collect himself. "That… to change the events of the past would create a temporal paradox! It could never happen, no, not ever…"

Dakota smiled slyly. "But time travel could?"

Balthazar slumped. Might as well discuss the matter as it was relevant. "In _theory_. The construction of the mechanisms necessary has never been done, in part because so many physicists have their doubts that it could ever be. But… I do not doubt. Not the least bit."

"So if you could, you'd go back in time to prevent the outbreak?"

"I told you, I couldn't fix things without causing a temporal paradox."

"Would you at least _try_ , though?" Those desperate, pleading eyes of Vinnie's stared directly at Balthazar.

Balthazar looked down. "I could always try, I suppose."

"You could save the world, you know," Vinnie asserted.

"However do you mean?"

"I mean you're brilliant. Like I'm the muscle here, I can poke a dozen vamps in a blink, but you? You have ideas. You have strategy. And most importantly, you're determined. You just don't give up. If anyone could save the world, it's you. If anyone can alter the course of fate—"

"But I don't want to change fate!" Balthazar spilled before he could reign in his tongue. He blushed. "Not… not if fate is what brought us together. I'd never change that."

"Then don't." Vinnie cupped Balthazar's chin in his hand. "And maybe you can't. You can go back and stop the vampires and even the Mississippi Purchase. Things that never should've happened. But maybe… maybe you and me are fate. And we'll happen one way or another."

Balthazar drew Vinnie towards himself.

He pressed his lips to his partner's.

Salty tears merged into sweet rain.

"My time traveler," Vinnie whispered into Balthazar's ear.

"My fellow time traveler," Balthazar whispered back.


	5. Chapter 5

It was strictly a matter of practicality that made the hunters retreat to Danville, and it took a lot of coaxing from Vinnie before Balthazar was ready.

"My university was there," Balthazar explained wistfully. "And classes were canceled for the semester once the city was invaded. I went home as soon as Mother sent for me and never looked back." He knew his partner didn't buy that last bit for a second, but it was the easiest version of events for either man to deal with.

"Look, I know it's some hard memories," Vinnie conceded, "but there's food there, and from all the rumors, the town didn't actually get hit that hard. They've got some good protection in place, apparently. There's still people living there in the same houses they had before the outbreak."

"That's more than I can say," Balthazar admitted as Vinnie let out a little cough. Vinnie tried to downplay it, but Balthazar was suspicious that his asthma was acting up again, and this proved to be the deciding factor. "We'll see if there's a viable medical care facility in the area, and any medicine to prescribe."

"I've fine, Balthy," Vinnie insisted.

"Very well, if you don't need it, then we'll just be on our way." Balthazar turned and started walking away in the opposite direction from Danville, exaggerating his steps to drive his point home.

"Okay, maybe hitting a pharmacy isn't the worst idea in the world," Vinnie conceded, jogging to keep up, "but while we're there, we're raiding the Listerine too, all right?" Oral hygiene hadn't been easy to maintain on the move, and that particular morning Balthazar's halitosis had not gone unnoticed.

Balthazar grinned devilishly and playfully exhaled in Vinnie's direction. Vinnie covered his nose and waved his hand as he ran away, admittedly farther away from their destination.

Balthazar caught his partner and yanked him into an embrace.

"Stop it!" Vinnie giggled, winking to let Balthazar know he didn't mean it.

"How does it taste now?" Balthazar pressed his lips to Vinnie's, which parted to receive the kiss more deeply.

"Much better. But you've had all day to improve it," Vinnie pointed out as he drew away for air.

"We have been travelling for quite some time. But so long as we don't wander anymore in the wrong direction, we should make it to Danville by nightfall."

"Are you two headed to Danville?" a voice called from a nearby thicket. A blonde girl with a backpack, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years of age, emerged onto the trail. "Can I come with? I need to get there, the sooner the better!"

"Sure, kid," Vinnie told her, "but what's the hurry?"

"I had to ice a couple of vamps today," she began, "but before I got them I overheard them say something about these other vampires, planning to set fire to Danville this evening to drive the humans out."

"Like they tried to do to Cavendish Manor while we were there," Vinnie realized as Balthazar shuddered at the memory.

"Thank you for the intel, young lady, erm, what's your name miss?"

"Veronica."

"Veronica, yes. We'll be sure to take every precaution once we reach the city, but a child such as yourself really should stay away from the fray. Things could get messy," Balthazar warned.

Veronica shook her head. "You don't understand. There's this kid Milo I used to babysit for, last I knew he and his folks were still in there. I better find him." She pushed past the older hunters, who turned to follow her.

"If he's with his parents, I'm sure he'll be perfectly safe," Balthazar assured her.

Veronica snorted. "You don't know Milo. Or his dad."

She didn't elaborate.

They feared the worst, but the skyline wasn't ablaze when they reached the city limits shortly after dusk. As big of a relief as that was, however, it was clear that the destruction had already begun.

Embers smoldered here and there, and some houses had collapsed. A firefighter had a vampire in a headlock as he poured holy water slowly down its back, making its skin sizzle.

"You wanted to mess with me? You might've had a shot. You wanted to mess with my town? Ah, maybe. But that was my daughter you just tried to mess with, and for that you don't stand a chance."

Sure enough, a little redheaded child of about five trembled behind him and covered her eyes as her father finished it off with a stake to the heart.

"Mr. Chase!" Veronica cried. "Mr. Chase, have you seen Milo?"

"Martin's kid? Best staying away if you know what's good for you!"

Veronica rolled her eyes and ran down the street, Vinnie and Balthazar right behind her. Suddenly she stopped short, forcing them to do likewise.

"Listen," she whispered, and sure enough, the pained sobs of a distressed child emitted from a house with a smashed-in roof. She immediately ran inside, Vinnie after her, but Balthazar hung back for just a moment to read the incorrectly punctuated sign in the yard: "The Teacher's." Underneath the sign were a dog bone and a plastic tractor.

This home belonged to a family.

He entered a living room, where Vinnie was pulling a screaming toddler out from under a couch. "Shh," Vinnie consoled the boy, while Veronica shook her head.

"It's not him! Look, I'd love to stay and help you here. Really I would. But you look like you've got it under control and I _gotta_ find Milo!" She ran for the door, pushing Balthazar out of the way as easily as if he were a beaded curtain. She paused for just a moment before whispering, "Good luck, all three of you."

She was gone.

"C'mon, buddy," Vinnie whispered, wiping tears from the boy's eyes. "We're not gonna hurt you, promise."

The child squirmed, but didn't really resist. "Daddy hurted Mommy!" he blurted out. "There was a fire and a man came in and bited him and then he bited her and then she went asleep and then he… he chased me but I was too fast and he eated Mommy instead." He cried again. It wasn't right that so much pain could exist in such a small person.

Balthazar placed a hand on his head. "It will be all right, child," he vowed. "What is your name?"

"Gregory."

"And how old are you, Gregory?"

Gregory held up three fingers.

"Well, Gregory, you're safe with us."

"Yeah, li'l guy," Vinnie affirmed. "We'll keep all the bad guys away. It's what we've been doing for a long time now. We fight monsters." He made a powerful fist and punched the air.

"Fight monsters!" Gregory imitated the gesture. Vinnie scooped him up and carried him outside, where the fireman from before flagged them down.

"Our city has largely gotten this incursion under control," Mr. Chase stated, "but if you don't mind, we request that as outsiders you report to the quarantine area. I know you probably think it's ridiculous because you haven't been bitten, but—"

"—it's standard protocol," Balthazar finished, amazed. It had been a long while since anything one might call "standard" had existed in his world. Just for the sake of _something_ following a concrete routine for once, he was all too happy to oblige. "Very well, then. Could you direct us to the facility?"

"Just follow the signs." Mr. Chase pointed at a white tarp suspended between two intact lampposts. Sure enough, the tarp bore a conspicuous orange arrow and a hospital insignia. "Ideally I'd escort you, but trust me, I'm needed elsewhere and it isn't that far. It's in the old fallout shelter under the city zoo."

"Did you hear that?" Vinnie asked Gregory, then declared in a singsong voice, "We're goin' to the zoo… we're goin' to the zoo… and then we're gonna see some _animals_!" For emphasis, he extended the arm that wasn't wrapped around the child.

For the first time, Gregory smiled just a tiny bit.

"They'll have what you need to patch him up down there, too," Mr. Chase noted, and Balthazar felt horrible that he just now noticed the boy's scratches and burns, which, while not severe, could not have been comfortable in the least.

"But sir… we aren't his legal guardians! Are we authorized…?"

Mr. Chase shook his head callously. "Do you want to take him?"

"Well we'd never leave an innocent child stranded!"

"Then there you go, authorized. Legal guardians as far as Danville cares anymore." And with that, he and his daughter walked away.

"Goin' to the zoo… goin' to the zoo…" Vinnie continued to chant with Gregory.

"Well I don't know how many animals we'll see from the isolation of the quarantine, but…"

"Hey so did we just adopt a kid?" Vinnie asked smugly as he looked up at Balthazar.

A kid. The thought had never once crossed their minds, let alone arisen in conversation, in all the time that they had been together. Vampire hunters didn't have children. Balthazar had nothing against it, and he was quite sure Vinnie was likewise inclined, but the idea was simply so incongruous with their lifestyle.

And yet, somehow, against all odds… they were parents.

Teacher's parents.

Gregory Teacher.

Balthazar smiled warmly. "It appears that we did."


	6. Chapter 6

As hard as it was to pinpoint when the vampire apocalypse began, it was even harder to say for certain when the world once again became safe.

In a way, one could claim that for Vinnie, Balthazar, and Gregory, it was over in a matter of days after the hunters' arrival in Danville. Upon their release from quarantine, they had been issued a single-room apartment in what used to be an office block. It was a tiny, cozy space where they set up two beds—one queen-size and one child—and kept them more or less made. A small cupboard by the door served as a pantry, and they even managed to find a mini-fridge that was functional except for a missing light bulb. Once a week they, like all residents of Danville, were granted passes to the laundromat, so they were cleaner than they could remember having been in a long while. And Veronica, satisfied with the Milo boy's safety, visited regularly and offered to take Gregory to what remained of the park or the library for a few hours. It was nerve-wracking parting with the child, but they knew he was in good hands with a clearly competent vampire hunter, and it allowed them the privacy their situation would otherwise have lacked. And she always returned him, bouncing and smiling, happy to have gotten out and about.

It was a new sense of stability, but there still existed that uncertainty that had become second nature, that constant need to check on each other's safety, that instinct to reach for a stake when one was startled out of sleep, to always leave garlic around the doorframe to seal it.

That softened about a year later, when they were given a suitably repaired house, a simple one-story layout that, with its two bedrooms, one bathroom, kitchenette and living room, might as well have been Cavendish Manor.

And society was recovering.

It wasn't normal the way everyone had known normal before. But there were doctors, and groceries, and neighbors.

Vinnie and Balthazar were accepted immediately when they enlisted among the vampire hunters employed by the city. Initially they were merely asked to patrol the border, but when it became evident how skilled they were, they were promoted to bodyguards for the agrarians who tended the farms just outside the city, and then again as part of a special team dispatched whenever the authorities had reason to believe a group of vampires might have set up in their vicinity. They were still fighting as many vampires as before, but now they got to clock out, grab Chinese takeout (or Mexican, when Vinnie was picking), and return to their own home, their own table, and their own son. In this setup, they found that they actually sort of liked their job.

And they liked the way Danville was learning to keep the vampires in check. They didn't go away, but incursions became smaller and rarer. More hunters were trained. The city built a wall. They developed special UV lights that, while not as potent as real sunlight, did deter vampires from approaching. Children learned a drill for what to do if they saw a vampire, first from public safety posters, and then at school.

For after years of reconstruction, there was, at last, school.

It was with pride that Balthazar accompanied Gregory to his first day of third grade after years of homeschooling, and with greater pride that he and Vinnie attended the boy's fifth grade "graduation" ceremony. But the true satisfaction lay simply in watching him grow up, in little moments like reading over a school assignment where he wrote a story about a time machine, or in overhearing him bragging to his friends about how both of his dads were hunters and saying he wanted to be just like them someday.

This was certainly flattering, although it did come with the drawback that Gregory was always begging his fathers to take him along to work sometime, and just when they thought maybe he was ready to at least watch a simple patrol shift, they received a detail that was certainly not appropriate for a child.

"You want live vampire specimens?" inquired Brick, a fellow hunter who, along with his fiancée Savannah, comprised the other half of the squad that Mr. Block, the Security Commissioner, had arranged for this task. "That's insane!"

"Just one, for the time being. It's for a proof of concept, the details of which I am not at liberty to divulge. We need one adult, preferably between the ages of twenty and fifty, and weighing at least 150 pounds."

"Us? Wrangle a 150-pound vampire?" Balthazar shuddered. Killing a vamp was fairly straightforward, but the idea of restraining one long enough to return it to Danville was an entirely different matter.

"So far, the four of you have the highest success rate of any of our hunters, so dispatching you is our best bet."

The four of them. It just didn't seem right to count Balthazar, who had started the apocalypse cowering in his cellar, alongside the likes of Vinnie, who had rescued him from said cellar; Brick, who had been a candidate to be the Security Commissioner himself until it was decided that he was needed more in the field; and Savannah, who since she was a small girl had been trained by her survivalist aunt and uncle to combat every possible kind of monster, from vampires to aliens to zombies, despite having no proof at the time that any of the above truly existed.

Balthazar hoped that the latter two did not.

He also hoped that a simple expedition into the surrounding wilderness could yield what they needed, but after spending two nights searching high and low, not a single bloodsucker had crossed their path. Ten years ago, this would have been cause for celebration, not frustration. It was strange how, just as an apocalypse could reshape a person's view of the world, so could a resurrection of civilization.

The terrifying thing was how quickly his team saw that as grounds to reject the safety and security they had spent so long trying to establish.

"We need a new approach," Savannah declared. "If we can't find the vampires, then we need to let the vampires find us."

"How do you mean?" Balthazar asked.

Brick responded with that condescending sneer Balthazar had always resented. "She means we need to entice them. We need bait."

Both he and Savannah looked at Vinnie, who, to Balthazar's alarm, nodded solemnly. "Live bait. I got this."

"You most certainly have not!" Balthazar cried. Everyone looked at him as though his outburst had been entirely unexpected. "Vinnie, you can't just sacrifice yourself like this!"

"I'm not 'sacrificing' anything! It's just strategy!"

"Then why not allow me to be the bait?"

"Because that's not strategic! For one, I'm the best at taking the vamps in one-on-one combat. You know I am. And for another, I'm a more alluring target! Let's face it, we've all noticed that the suckers prefer guys with a little pudge." For emphasis, he poked his belly. It was true that, despite their strenuous career, Vinnie had managed to put on some weight in the years since they had settled in Danville. He wasn't fat or anything, but next to Brick's chiseled abs and Savannah's toned physique and Balthazar's ectomorphic frame, he was clearly the most delectable meal to the vampiric mind.

"Well at least take a good supply of weapons with you!"

"No can do. If they see me holding a bag of stakes, they'll know what we're up to. I need to look like an easy meal."

"Vinnie, I… I can't let you do this…"

"Balthy, I'm gonna be fine. The rest of you will be waiting with UV flashlights and diluted holy water and rope and a cage. We'll bring it back to the lab and forget this ever happened." He placed a hand on Balthazar's cheek and kissed him softly. "Promise."

Promise.

Balthazar repeated the word to himself when they went out the third night, armed with all of the necessary equipment. He repeated it to himself when they left a trail of donated human blood to attract any vampires that might be in the area. He repeated it to himself when they found the clearing, when they positioned Vinnie as though he were injured and dying and easy prey. He repeated it to himself when he kissed Vinnie—for all he knew, for the last time—and retreated into the brush for the long stakeout with Brick and Savannah.

It might have been ten minutes, or it might have been six hours, but either way the time was insufferable, waiting, watching, knowing that the slightest misstep could cost Balthazar the love that had sustained him for the past decade.

And yet it didn't prepare him for the moment when the vampire did, in fact, appear.

Brick had to proactively grip Balthazar's arm to prevent him from instinctively rushing to protect his partner. That thing wanted to eat Vinnie, to kill him, to do to him what they'd done to Gregory's parents and Balthazar's family and everyone at the warehouse that one time…

"Sit. Down," Brick commanded through gritted teeth. "He's got this under control."

It lunged for Vinnie, fangs descended, hunger coursing through that cruel porcelain skin.

Vinnie rolled out of the way.

But the vampire adjusted its course in mid-air.

It landed squarely on top of him.

Fresh blood spilled.

"Now!" Vinnie cried, but Balthazar was already running.

This wasn't going to happen. He wasn't going to let it.

They could get another specimen another night.

This one was going down.

The stake was at the ready as the thing lapped up Vinnie's blood greedily, coldly. Balthazar couldn't see anything except that sinister form as he drove a stake through its…

…not heart. Why was it that even after all these years, he still kept planting it off-center?

The vampire stumbled backwards in surprise, and for a surreal moment, Balthazar got a good look at its face, at its whole body. It was male, with black hair and a unibrow. Its chin and nose were eerily pointy. It was tall and thin, but still likely at least 150 pounds as Mr. Block had requested. And for some inexplicable reason, it was wearing a cape.

They made eye contact, and something in those eyes was not angry or sadistic, the way most of the monsters had been, but fearful, confused, as if it honestly didn't know why anyone would try to kill it. But Balthazar knew better. It had tried to kill Vinnie, and for that, it deserved to die.

Or at least be sedated by UV lights and holy water and tied up and locked in a cage… as was the original plan… like Brick and Savannah were doing now.

"You… you were really gonna kill him, weren't you?" Vinnie asked as Balthazar ran to him.

Balthazar ignored his partner's incredulity. "You're injured!" Indeed, a wound on Vinnie's upper right arm gushed profusely, and Balthazar wondered if that placed him at a greater risk of being attacked yet again tonight.

"Yeah, darn thing's claws got my skin. No venom, at least, that much I can tell." Vinnie beamed. "But we got him! We got the specimen!"

"Hold still and let me bandage you up."

Vinnie complied for about five seconds, then reached out with his good arm, grabbed the back of Balthazar's head, and held it firmly while he attacked his partner's lips with his own. Despite all the other times their lives had been in jeopardy and recovered, somehow Balthazar had never found Vinnie's mouth to be quite so sweet as it was tonight, and he felt that they could have stayed in that field for hours, just working off the fear of those few terrifying moments. It didn't matter that their colleagues were present or that the grass was scratchy or that there could be more vampires about; Vinnie was here, Vinnie was safe, and Vinnie was eager.

"Come on, you two, it's three miles back to Danville with this cage!" Brick called, his head deliberately turned away while Savannah held a hand over her eyes.

"We're coming!" Balthazar replied, prompting a playful smirk from Vinnie. "Oh do grow up," he whispered.

"We'll finish this later?" Vinnie asked hopefully as he stood up and dusted himself off, wincing in pain as he remembered his injury.

"By Jove we shall," Balthazar breathed, and they followed the other hunters into the night, ready to drop off their specimen and forget the whole thing ever happened.

But as it happened, this bizarre assignment was only the beginning.

Things were about to get much stranger, and the next sign came via an institution that was supposed to be a hallmark of normalcy:

Gregory's middle school.


	7. Chapter 7

Pointy nose and chin. A unibrow. And that blasted cape.

Balthazar felt like he was in a dream, some nightmare that combined his bad memories of vampires with his bad memories of school.

But it wasn't a dream. He was, in fact, at parent-teacher conference night, and the man who sat before him, Kyle Draco, his son's teacher, was undoubtedly the man he recognized all too well.

And by the looks of it, Mr. Draco recognized him all too equally well.

"Mr. Teacher?" Mr. Draco asked incredulously. "You're Gregory's father?"

"It's Mr. Cavendish," Balthazar corrected, "and yes, I am, and how the devil did the school not notice they were hiring a—?"

"Shh!" pleaded Mr. Draco, "I can explain. I owe you a massive debt of gratitude…"

"Gratitude? For what? Turning you over to some laboratory to perform Jove knows what kind of experiments on you?" Not that the bloodsucker didn't deserve that and more after nearly eating the love of Balthazar's life. Balthazar shuddered to think of all the opportunities Mr. Draco must have had to do likewise with Gregory in the two months since school had started.

"For saving me!" Mr. Draco swallowed and reached under his desk for a cooler. After checking to make sure the door was closed, he opened it to reveal a vial of pills and a canister with a thick, dark liquid inside.

"Don't tell me that's—"

"Pig's blood, I promise it!" Mr. Draco unscrewed the cap of the vial. "And iron supplements. It's part of a daily nutritional regimen. I no longer require human blood to subsist. I no longer even desire it. I can think clearly and even tolerate small amounts of sunlight. All thanks to an intensive treatment I received at Danville University."

Balthazar could feel the blood drain from his face. "The University is… still standing? And operational?"

Mr. Draco nodded. "Dr. Underwood utilizes its laboratories when she has insufficient space at the hospital. She oversaw my treatment as she devised it herself."

Balthazar straightened. This story would require verification. "Very well then. I shall require a word with her." He stood up and strode for the door.

"Now?" asked Mr. Draco, bewildered. "But we never even got to discuss Gregory's progress."

"You teach my son. I entrust him to your care every day. I need confirmation that this is wise before I listen to you any further."

Mr. Draco looked down. "I… I suppose that is fair. She is likely to be present tonight, though," he added helpfully. "If I am not mistaken, she has a son, Zackery, in the seventh grade, and would likely be conversing with his teachers as we speak."

With that, Balthazar darted from the room and made a break for the seventh-grade wing.

He supposed it might have been premature to have left without asking first for a description of this Dr. Underwood, but as luck would have it, a bespectacled, black woman with a stethoscope was sitting in a chair just outside Ms. Murawski's room. A nametag was pinned to the front of a lab coat she wore over purple scrubs, identifying her as the physician he sought.

"Dr. Underwood?" he inquired, and she looked up from the ancient magazine she was reading.

"Please, call me Eileen," she greeted him pleasantly, holding out a hand for Balthazar to shake.

"Eileen," he amended. "I was just speaking with my son's teacher, a Mr. Kyle Draco."

"Mm-hmm?"

"He said he knew you. He said you cured him."

Eileen's eyes widened. Her eyes darted up and down the hallway. There were other parents milling about, although admittedly none seemed to be paying attention to Balthazar or Eileen in the slightest. "What did he tell you?" she said in a low voice.

"He didn't have to tell me much. I know for a fact what he is because I turned him in myself."

Eileen frowned. "If you're a hunter, then you should know perfectly well that Project Marsh is classified."

"They never told us there was a Project Marsh," Balthazar protested. "Our instructions were to capture a live vampire—" Eileen motioned for him to keep quieter "—and deliver it to the Security Commissioner. They didn't tell us anything else."

"If they kept you in the dark," Eileen pondered, "then I probably shouldn't say anything either."

"Please, it's extremely important!"

Eileen sighed. "No, it isn't," she contradicted him. "What I have isn't some miracle cure for the vampires. It just isn't practical for widespread use. It requires weeks of careful oversight, and massive doses of a protein that is difficult to synthesize. There is only one known natural source, and given the disruption the vampire breakout placed on agriculture, we can't farm it."

"And what is that source?"

"Pistachio nuts."

Pistachios.

It was a ludicrous notion, and Balthazar had to bite his tongue lest he start laughing in the middle of the hallway. He managed to retain composure, though, and thank the doctor for her time, and more or less forget about that fleeting notion of a cure for the next few hours.

Then, late at night when Vinnie climbed out of bed to raid the pantry, as he was prone to do, Balthazar's train of thought led him from the peanuts Vinnie was undoubtedly looking for, to nuts in general, to pistachios, to the fact that this formerly abundant tree nut was now the limiting factor in reversing the damage of the catastrophic plague, and he guffawed heartily, so much that Vinnie had to run back and check to make sure Balthazar could still breathe.

"Hey hey hey, are you all right?" Vinnie asked, the can of peanuts still in his hand.

Balthazar nodded but could not speak because he was still laughing too hard.

"I mean, it's an improvement on the usual screaming, but come on, you'll wake up Gregory."

The thought sobered Balthazar almost instantly. He wasn't sure how much he actually screamed in his sleep, since Vinnie tried to downplay it and Balthazar didn't often remember it the next day, but he knew from Gregory's own night terrors that consoling him couldn't be pleasant. How Vinnie managed to sleep soundly every night, none of the men knew.

"I'm sorry," Balthazar said. "I've just had a very peculiar evening." And he told Vinnie everything, about his encounter with Mr. Draco, about Dr. Underwood, about the hypothetical cure.

"Pistachios." Vinnie's eyes widened.

"I know, is it not preposterous?"

"Balthy," Vinnie whispered, "don't you remember?"

"Remember? Remember what?"

And then it hit him.

That warehouse, the place he and Vinnie had made their encampment with a good company of people, the rest of whom were no more, had been filled to the brim with pistachios. It was what drew them there in the first place—the promise of all that protein, ripe for the taking.

The pistachio had been the nut that lured their comrades to their deaths.

Balthazar felt sick to his stomach. He darted up in bed, hand over his mouth, convulsing. Vinnie put a hand on his shoulder and motioned for Balthazar to take deep breaths.

And yet, there was one matter that warranted investigation.

"Do you suppose they're still there?"


	8. Chapter 8

"Are you completely insane?" Savannah hissed in the hallway of the Security Coalition's headquarters after Balthazar and Vinnie told her about the proposal they had sent to Mr. Block.

"That warehouse is in the thick of the Hot Zone, and it's a four-day walk outside the city!" Brick pointed out. The Hot Zone was the region of the tri-state area that had been impacted the hardest. There were other cities like Danville elsewhere that were in various stages of rebuilding (although regular contact was difficult in the absence of much gasoline), but the Hot Zone showed no sign of any human activity having been present whatsoever in the past few years. Even the nomads who showed up in Danville now and then seeking refuge originated from some other location—some had even trekked the long way around the Hot Zone because they knew all too well the perils of crossing it.

"I am entirely serious," Balthazar insisted, and he was—marching into a hellhole like that was no laughing matter, after all. Truthfully the thought terrified him. But he didn't dare show it to anyone besides Vinnie, because any of his comrades or superiors would take the slightest betrayal of uncertainty as a sign that the mission was entirely foolish. "There is evidence that the pistachio could lead to a cure for vampirism, the worst plague to ever afflict humanity!"

"And you're suggesting we march right into it? No thanks!" Brick crossed his arms.

"Well… strictly speaking he didn't suggest you march into it," Vinnie said. He swallowed. "All he needs is for Mr. Block to authorize our use of patrol equipment and absence for the time it takes to retrieve the nuts. Then the two of us can go. Naturally, we'd feel a lot better about our odds with you two at our side, but we can't force you to come along."

Balthazar nodded, although his heart sank just a little bit at the idea of having less backup. But he and Vinnie had survived for years as mostly just a party of two. They had what it took.

He hoped.

Mr. Block emerged from his office.

"After consulting both the city officials and our best researchers… I can approve this mission, as the potential benefit outweighs the risk. However, seeing as we have to retain at least some of our top hunters, I can only dispatch up to two of you."

"Good. Have fun," Savannah said, stepping backwards and away. Brick followed her.

Vinnie placed a hand on Balthazar's shoulder. "Are you ready for this?" he asked, as though Mr. Block were not there.

Balthazar looked his partner right in the eye. "I am utterly ready."

"Utterly ready" became their go-to term in the days that followed. They were "utterly ready" when they packed the best equipment and yet the scantest provisions, leaving room to haul as many pistachios back as they possibly could. They were "utterly ready" when they dusted off the old map that had sat on the shelf for many years, hoping the boundaries of the more vampire-ridden areas had not changed too much. They were "utterly ready" when they dropped off Gregory with the Chase family, assuring him, with tears in their eyes, that they would come back as soon as they completed the mission, determined that he not be orphaned twice.

And they were "utterly ready" when they set foot outside the city gate, knowing that one way or another, they would become history.

The first two nights truly weren't that bad. After all, proximity to a city with a competent vampire patrol system in place had either depleted or driven away any local vampire populations. They saw the first one in the pre-dawn twilight on the second night, and killed it by instinct. Balthazar tried to suppress the nagging question of whether it could have been saved with the new cure, whether that made killing it tantamount to murder, but when he saw the second and third vampire converging on Vinnie, well, there was no question about it—they must die.

Once the sun rose and the hunters found a particularly bright spot on a rooftop to set up camp to grab a few hours' sleep, Balthazar noticed Vinnie shaking just a tiny bit, and he knew without a word being spoken that the same question had been eating at his partner just as much. And without a word, he drew Vinnie closer to himself, letting him know that it was okay, that the kills had not been in vain, that they were both still good men.

The third night proved more trying, as vampire sightings became more and more frequent, and so did the slayings. They may have been somewhat out of shape, but the muscle memory and reflexes to protect themselves and each other were all still there. There were some close calls, but neither man suffered any real injury as they fought off the predators.

It was on the fourth night, when they were perhaps just a few blocks away from the warehouse, that the full impact of what they were about to do, of what they had already done, washed over them both.

To Balthazar's shock, it hit Vinnie harder.

"Things could've been different," he said flatly. "If we'd known all those years ago… if Dr. Underwood had devised her cure sooner… nobody in the warehouse would've had to die. Not the vampires, and not our friends."

"It's useless to dwell on the past," Balthazar responded. He shivered at the coldness of his own words. "Please, let us pursue a brighter future."

"After we go in there, let's hope we have a future at all."

"Now hold on just one moment!" Balthazar grabbed Vinnie's shoulder. "Where is all of this coming from? Because it isn't the Vinnie I know at all!"

"It's the Vinnie I know all too well!" Vinnie blurted out. He trembled. "I tried to be brave for you the last time we were here. You were a wreck, and I didn't… I didn't want to break you. And after that it was just how we rolled. But listen… I still see them. I still see us as the last ones standing. I still have nightmares. I still ask the what-ifs."

Balthazar scooped Vinnie up in his arms and lifted him off the ground. Tears rolled down his eyes as he planted a kiss on his partner's lips, something soft and warm and safe.

Vinnie squeezed Balthazar tightly.

"Does… does this mean you aren't ready to go in?" Balthazar asked. It was, after all, probably unwise of them to linger on an open street in the midst of the Hot Zone.

Vinnie shook his head, then nodded, then shook again, then nodded again. Finally, he shrugged his shoulders, defeated. "I really don't know. It's all different this time."

"How so?"

"Because last time we were here, we didn't have nearly as much to lose. As soon as we walked out of there with you alive, I knew I hadn't really lost anything at all. But look at us now. Ten years into a relationship. We have a house and a child and date nights. You know exactly where to scratch my back when it itches, and I know how you like your tea. And even though our government's pretty haphazard right now and nobody gets birth or death or marriage certificates… I was thinking lately there had to be some way to seal things more permanently."

"Permanently?" Balthazar's breath caught. "You mean as husbands, officially?"

"As officially as anything is these days. I mean, I know it wouldn't change much about our situation, but that's kind of it… I don't want our situation to change."

"Well now we have to survive!" Husbands. It hadn't really been high on their list of priorities until now, between survival mode and forgetting their time in survival mode. But now it seemed perfect. A cure for vampirism, after all, would render vampire hunters unnecessary. They could finally leave that chapter of their lives completely as they started a new one.

"We have to, but that doesn't mean that we will!" Vinnie swallowed. It was a bit disorienting, seeing Vinnie without his usual optimistic resolve, but after that proposal, however casual, Balthazar already felt like he was floating, spinning, like the rules of time and space simply no longer applied.

"Oh, but we will. You taught me that last time."

"I did?"

"You taught me that other things can change. And they have. Our situation is by many orders of magnitude better now than it was the last time we were here. But the one thing we can't change, the one thing that's truly fate, is the two of us. Our partnership transcends any sort of logic, any sort of odds, any sort of luck. You could send us to opposite sides of the world, erase our memories, and we'd still find our way back together. Mark my words: We are leaving that warehouse alive. And… with our arms full of pistachios, I suppose."

A small smile crossed Vinnie's face, and he buried himself in Balthazar's chest for a solid minute. Balthazar allowed it, keeping vigil for any stray vampires who would take advantage of the moment of intimacy, but things stayed remarkably quiet.

It was as if the universe itself was giving them this moment.

"If that's what you believe, then I believe it too," Vinnie declared, and proceeded to lead for the remainder of their trek to the warehouse.

Their new resolve was to be tested, however, by what transpired in the following couple of hours.


	9. Chapter 9

A large, enclosed space with few windows, it turned out, made the perfect den for the largest company of vampires the hunters had seen yet.

And the humans' presence was concealed just long enough to make out the horrors that lay within.

The nuts were still there, to be sure. Piles and piles of canisters towered unopened, entirely useless to a predatory species. But immediately adjacent to the foodstuffs were the remains of other meals... many other meals.

Clearly, the wraiths were not particularly compelled to take out their trash.

Yet the bones that had sat there for who knew how long—years, possibly?—were, aside from their putrid stench, surprisingly easy to stomach. It was as if hundreds, perhaps thousands, of surplus Halloween decorations had been left haphazardly in a storehouse, awaiting the next year.

No, it was the recent kills that amplified Balthazar's traumatic memories.

Faces, the same faces the victims had worn as they died, were frozen in expressions of pure terror, with eyes either wide open or clenched shut, no in-between. Male, female, young, elderly—every kind of person imaginable bore the look of sheer anguish at the moment they realized they were not to survive the vampire apocalypse, despite however long they had managed thus far. There was always that bitterness at having finally, after years of resistance, succumbed to the plague.

And needless to say, there was blood.

Not a lot, of course. The vampires were presumably not keen on wasting their dinner. But there were flecks on the victims' faces, there were dried bits caked onto feeding punctures, there were even jars of the stuff being held for later. And naturally, there was blood on the icy white faces of hungry monsters, blood that gushed from fresh wounds as they eagerly bit into the day's catch.

That was when the first of those icy white faces turned, and were upon Balthazar and Vinnie in a heartbeat, pleasantly surprised at the prospect of dessert.

"Come, fellows, there is yet another treat on which we may dine!" a vampire in a yellow hard hat shouted, and even more followed, hoping for a share before the swarm descended.

Balthazar yanked a crucifix out of his pocket and held it at arm's length. This at least prompted the horde to shrink back, but it was not long at all before the monsters started launching projectiles—primarily cans of nuts, as they were handy, but also plenty of those bones that lay strewn about—in an attempt to knock it out of his hand. He clenched it tightly, but a few hits landed, and the sight of bloody knuckles only seemed to entice them more.

Vinnie yanked on his shoulder. "We gotta retreat!" he yelled as he spritzed holy water at any vampire who dared venture too close.

Balthazar nodded as Vinnie, in an apparent burst of adrenaline, hoisted Balthazar up and onto a large crate behind them, after which Balthazar returned the favor just as a set of claws tore at Vinnie's leg.

"So much for my track suit," he lamented as he shoved himself and his partner into another crate that lay on its side on top of the first one. He reflexively reached for the garlic powder to lace the opening, but Balthazar was already on the task, planting his crucifix a yard away for added protection. Vinnie added his own and groaned. "We should've just had those things tattooed on us years ago, don't you think? That probably would've worked."

Balthazar shuddered, not wishing to point out all of the creative ways a vampire might view such as a challenge to extract the crosses from their skin.

"Look, we don't have to fight them all," Vinnie said. "We came for the pistachios, and we'll get the pistachios, and then we'll make a break for it."

"With our arms full of pistachios and a throng of bloodsuckers on our tail?" Balthazar questioned. "We'll need to formulate a plan to ensure that we won't be followed!"

Vinnie thought for a moment. "There's our UV flashlights. Those should at least slow them down."

"But how to get the beam on all of them at once?"

"Don't have to. Just shine it in the direction of whichever one is the nearest… like that one!"

A big, snarling vampire had just climbed atop the crate himself, fist in the air to champion his victory. Balthazar pulled the light on him as fast as he could. It was certainly nothing compared to sunlight, but the creature winced as blisters popped up on his skin in response to the exposure.

Boldly, bracing himself against the slightest misstep, Balthazar proceeded to the nearest pile of pistachios he could find, planting a few stakes into some especially bold vampires who had managed to grit their fangs against the pain in pursuit of the meal before them.

It was a slow battle to reach the nuts, and there were some close calls and some backtracking, but finally they made it. Balthazar stood in defense while Dakota dumped as many pistachios as he could into their knapsacks, breaking open a few containers so as to allow some to fit in the cracks.

"We've almost got it," Balthazar breathed. "We'll use the last of our garlic stores to make a path from here to that exit. The sun ought to be rising by now, so as soon as we make it outside, we're home free!" They both knew that wasn't exactly true, that there were plenty of shadows where a stray vampire or two could be lurking, but after this onslaught, one or two rogues sounded like child's play. "All we have to do is to keep them at bay—"

That was when the flashlight burned out.

Gleefully, eight or nine wraiths charged at once, earning themselves a good staking, but getting far too close for comfort. "I think I've held them off! Just close the knapsack already, and we'll go with what we have!"

"Erm, yes, about that…"

Balthazar turned around and felt his body temperature plummet.

There lay his partner on the ground, bleeding severely, the knapsack strewn open, spilled across the floor. Three vampires huddled above Vinnie, one going in for a long, drawn-out…

Nothing.

They, too, were dead so quickly Balthazar couldn't remember how he killed them.

He yanked out every last bandage he could find, desperate to stop his partner from bleeding any further.

"Sorry about the sack," Vinnie said.

"The sack—? You're bloody hurt… literally!" Two more vamps, two more stakes without breaking the conversation. "Who the devil cares about those bloody nuts now?"

"They're what we came for!"

"Yes, but they're not what I'm leaving for!" Four more vamps.

"Look, you can't save me…"

"Don't talk like that!" Hot tears steamed up Balthazar's glasses, salty enough to season every last pistachio in the warehouse.

"It's… true…" Vinnie moaned as Balthazar emptied his last vial of holy water. "I can feel it. The venom…"

Venom.

Vinnie was turning into a—

"You're not turning into a vampire!" Balthazar insisted. "We have these nuts, we're getting you the cure. No ifs, ands, or buts now!" He yanked four or five stakes out of his targets, who, despite the demise of their comrades, showed no intention of relenting.

Immediately, the stakes were knocked from his hand by a...

…not vampire.

"Children?" Balthazar breathed. "What the devil are you doing here?"

The brunette boy who had been tossed into Balthazar, forcing him to drop the stakes, stood up and dusted himself off. "Well, funny story, see there was this woodpecker—"

"Not the time, Milo!" a black boy in flannel insisted. "We've gotta get out of here, ASAP!"

Milo. Why did that name ring a bell?

"Now, now. Zack. Melissa. There's a way out of this."

"So what is it?" a redheaded girl asked impatiently. She looked vaguely familiar.

"That's what we still have to figure out!" Milo answered, his voice strangely light.

More vampires came forth, but this time, Balthazar didn't have to lift a finger. Melissa managed to strike them down without breaking a sweat.

"Children, it is imperative that you get yourselves to safety!" Balthazar insisted. "My partner's condition is already critical, and there is no way I can look out for you as well!"

"I have some first aid supplies!"

"Milo, focus!"

"This will only take a moment." He took off his own backpack and began to rummage through it. He tossed aside a bag of chips, a bottle of water, a rubber chicken… an anchor? "Nope, scratch that… aw shucks, I must've left it upstairs with—"

Up a very tall, metal grate stairwell that wrapped around a pillar that didn't look very sturdy at all, a dog stood on a platform, holding a first-aid kit in his mouth.

"Diogee! Go home! But, uh, drop my kit while you're at it?"

Diogee did drop the kit, whilst letting out a very loud bark.

Vinnie clenched his eyes shut as the venom burned throughout his body. "Look, forget about me kid, Balthazar's right, you have to get out while you can."

"We're not leaving you!" Balthazar insisted. "I'll grab the kit myself."

Milo waved his hand dismissively. "Don't be silly! I feel really bad about making you lose your weapons. The least I can do is make it up to you."

And before Balthazar could protest any further, Milo was bounding up the stairs two at a time.

Melissa helpfully passed Balthazar a few of her own stakes so he could help ward off the onslaught. "Looks like we're at that kind of party," she muttered wryly.

More slayings, but the vampires kept coming.

"Just get the pistachios and get out!" Vinnie insisted.

"That is not happening!"

"I got the kit!" Milo called triumphantly, leaning over the railing. "Now let me just… whoops!"

A single bolt jerked loose from under the platform, hitting the ground with a clink! that was somehow audible amidst all the chaos.

"Eh… Murphy's law!"

The bolt was soon accompanied by a few more.

The platform tilted.

Milo grabbed hold of an adjacent pipe, which burst, for some reason still attached to a water source.

The jet hit the unstable pillar.

The pillar leaned…

"Milo!" Melissa and Zack called out together.

"It's okay, I have my new—"

Balthazar couldn't hear what new thing Milo Murphy evidently had, because just then a chunk of the building's roof was torn off as the pillar came down.

Sunlight poured in.

Dozens of remaining vampires screamed in agony as they scurried away into secluded nooks and crannies, most not making it in time.

Bubbling, boiling skin slid off the vampires like water on an oily surface.

"Now's your chance!" Vinnie insisted, but instead Balthazar scooped up his future husband and ran outside into the sun, that glorious sun.

"There's still pistachios in the bag I'm wearing," Balthazar assured him as he continued running, eager to remove his partner from that dreadful place once and for all. As soon as Vinnie was safe, he could go back for the children. "This mission has not been in vain." He set Vinnie down on a nicely lit bench as he reached behind him.

There was nothing there.

Panic seized him. Had he set it down? Had he failed to pick it up? Was it somewhere back there in the pool of molten vampire juice?

A siren sounded.

A siren?

Sure enough, a bright red engine rounded the corner, piloted by the girl who was surely too young to be driving at all. Where had she gotten the machine? And where had she gotten the gas?

Her friends were with her, their arms loaded down with lots and lots of pistachios.

"Got you covered," she told the hunters smugly. "To Danville, right?"

Vinnie smiled at her, then curled in on himself, holding up a hand to the sunlight, trying to block it from his face.

Fear jolted throughout Balthazar's body. "Sensitivity to light?" he whispered as he crammed himself and his partner in alongside the boys and the pistachios.

"It's too late," Vinnie said. "I'll turn soon."

"I'll see to it that you bloody well don't!" Only now, now that they were secured in the truck and charging back to Danville along the remains of the highway at 100 mph, now that there wasn't a thing left that Balthazar could do except hold his fiancé and wait to arrive, did Balthazar allow himself to fully feel every emotion he was left with, all the triumph and dread and exuberance and fear and grief, all at once.

He sobbed, tears gushing all over Vinnie's face, which was already starting to lose some of its color. Balthazar knew it wasn't just blood loss. He knew the man he loved was already showing signs, that he was becoming the very thing they had fought since the very hour they met.

But he also knew that this time, there was hope, however slim.

Perhaps Dr. Underwood could use the pistachios to stabilize Vinnie the way she had Mr. Draco. Balthazar wouldn't mind Vinnie becoming a little bit paler and colder to the touch. He would learn to stock up the fridge with animal blood as necessary. They could still go out in the evenings after sundown, or else stay at home and read books with Gregory. And surely vampires were every bit as capable as humans of kissing, of dancing, of making love.

Of loving.

This didn't have to be the end. Yet the fact that it could still be, that so much remained unknown, kept Balthazar silent the rest of the way there, save to soothe Vinnie when the burn of the venom caused the man with the sunglasses to cry out in anguish.


	10. Chapter 10

Balthazar sat, stood up, paced three times, sat back down again.

He had been doing this for nearly five hours, and he knew things were just beginning.

As soon as they got to Danville, Zack had directed Melissa straight to the University campus, to his mother's laboratory, and practically kicked the doors down to get Vinnie and the pistachios to her in time. After an abridged version of events, she called up her associates, who had an operating room set up and ready to go in a matter of minutes.

Balthazar hadn't been permitted to go in, which he understood, but it did nothing to calm his active imagination, which was picturing all the different ways this pistachio cure might be administered. Given the necessity of an operating room, none of those ways were pleasant.

To be fair, Dr. Underwood hadn't allowed her own son in, let alone his lady friend. As for Milo, he had remained outside the building, not wishing to jeopardize the protocol.

Perhaps Balthazar would have done well to do likewise, to get some fresh air and clear his head, but he found that he couldn't extract himself from a six-foot radius around that blasted chair. Zack and Melissa, meanwhile, left to join their friend, and subsequently returned with Gregory in tow. Somehow, as well as Balthazar had come to know their local fireman, he had never met Mr. Chase's family, and it had never crossed his mind that the girl at the warehouse might in fact be the daughter of the man to whom he had entrusted custody of his only son.

"Pap?" Gregory had asked Balthazar every ten minutes or so. "Pap, what's going on with Dad? Is he going to be okay?"

When it became clear that Balthazar couldn't articulate an answer, Gregory had slumped into another chair, mindlessly doodling as though he didn't know the danger Vinnie was in.

Balthazar knew he should do something else, that if Vinnie's treatment turned out remotely like Mr. Draco's, then it would be weeks before he was ready to venture outside, to be introduced to the public. He should take Gregory home, and come back later to check on Vinnie's progress.

But he just couldn't bring himself to leave.

If he had already seen the last he was going to see of Vinnie alive, then he couldn't bear to leave the possibility of seeing him one last time, even in death.

He dropped to the floor, hands over his eyes, the what-ifs and maybes flying through his mind so rapidly that he couldn't concentrate on any particular one for very long.

That was when a hand tapped his shoulder, and he jolted back into the moment.

It was Dr. Underwood.

She was smiling.

"Mr. Cavendish? Mr. Cavendish, your partner is going to be just fine. We caught his infection just in time."

"'In time'? In time for what?"

"In time to prevent the onset of full-blown vampirism. Mr. Draco proved that vampires could be reintroduced to society, but Mr. Dakota has now proven that it's possible to reverse the effects of the venom completely. He remains entirely human."

The joy that welled up within Balthazar was uncontainable. Human. Vinnie was human. After hoping desperately that Vinnie wouldn't become a dangerous vampire, or even just that he wouldn't die from complications in the treatment, the miracle of having him back as he was before was nearly too much to process.

Without even asking if he was allowed to go in to see Vinnie, Balthazar bolted for the door of the operating room.

"A few hours' treatment and they've got you stabilized?" Balthazar asked incredulously between kisses after he rushed into Vinnie's arms.

Gregory followed behind them and hugged Vinnie tightly, once, before taking a step backwards, blushing and pretending that there weren't any tears in his eyes.

Vinnie nodded. "I'm not a vamp, that's for sure! Which is good, 'cause I could really go for a grinder with extra garlic right now, and hold the blood."

Dr. Underwood walked in, laughing. "Appetite is a good sign; however, I'll have to ask that for the time being you take it easy. I've got a team coming in shortly to evaluate you, and their results will be more accurate if you fast prior."

Vinnie crossed his arms, disappointed. Balthazar planted a sympathetic kiss on his forehead and whispered, "It's all right. As soon as they're done, I'll take you out for the finest cuisine to be had in all of Danville. And you can order it with as much garlic as you like."

"If I do that, do I still get a goodnight kiss?"

Gregory pretended to gag. Lately he had been averse to displays of affection between his parents. Normal for a boy his age, but Balthazar and Vinnie had never let that hinder them in the least.

"Yes. Just be forewarned that I reserve the right to the same allowance of onions. And Mr. Teacher, you can expect to stay home with a sitter if that's going to be your attitude."

Gregory wrinkled his nose but said nothing.

"Deal," Vinnie concurred.

Balthazar laughed, relieved, hopeful. Before long they could put this whole incident behind them, could put the entire apocalypse behind them, could someday reach a point where nobody needed to run incursion drills anymore or watch their loved ones be devoured, where people could move freely between cities, day or night, or even safely live outside of cities.

Maybe they could return to the Manor, and Gregory could be raised as a true Cavendish, and come to know and love the home that would one day be his inheritance. Maybe when Balthazar and Vinnie were old and wrinkled, they could watch the sunset from rocking chairs on the porch, drinking tea, sharing a blanket when it got chilly.

Maybe they could have a future, however distant.

"So how long will it be, Dr. Underwood?"

"Until what?" the doctor asked as she ushered in a conglomerate of fellow hunters—Mr. Block was among them, but Brick and Savannah were not—and scientists, or so Balthazar assumed.

"Until we get this cure out to the general public! Until we end this plague!"

Underwood's face fell. She clutched her clipboard to her chest and took off her glasses. "Mr. Cavendish… that isn't going to happen."

The temperature in the room seemed to drop about thirty degrees. "What? But your cure—"

Dr. Underwood closed her eyes. "Mr. Cavendish, the city of Danville owes you and your partner an enormous debt of gratitude for what you went through in order to obtain the supply of pistachios that is now in our possession. But an estimated billion vampires roam the planet, if projections based on population and urban planning in other countries are to be believed. Even if you had rescued every pistachio in that warehouse, in every warehouse, it wouldn't be nearly enough to bring every single one of them into a functional state as we did with Mr. Draco. It takes around two hundred times as many pistachios to rehabilitate an existing vampire as it does to reverse the process in one who hasn't finished turning. And our supply remains limited." Dr. Underwood paused, and Balthazar realized a number of the scientists seemed to be jotting down notes. They started scribbling faster as she continued, "The protocol I would advise for the city to implement is to reserve Project Marsh's therapy for when one of its citizens is bitten. There is a critical period that I would estimate to be around twelve hours, more or less depending on the weight of the victim, between the initial bite and the point at which the transformation becomes irreversible. In that time, a person who is attacked can be saved. We may not be able to restore humanity to the hordes that haunt our wilderness, but we can at the very least prevent further outbreaks, and loss of loved ones."

Anger burned in Balthazar's cheeks. They hadn't made anything better. They had only kept things from getting worse, like they had always done. "And what about the 'loved ones' who've been turned already?!" he exploded.

"Balthy," Vinnie warned, taking Balthazar's hand in hopes of calming him down. Gregory, who had shrunk back from all the hubbub, stepped awkwardly into the hallway, but kept his eyes on his parents.

"Tell our citizens who've lost friends, family, lovers, and yet know they still roam beyond this city's blasted walls! Tell them you can't spare a cure for the people they care about, because somebody else might get bitten down the road!"

"They've made their peace!" Dr. Underwood shot back fiercely. "They've already finished mourning. Let's not give anyone reason to mourn further." She exhaled and looked down. "The old adage applies. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

"An ounce of prevention," Balthazar repeated. He fell to his knees in despair, not caring that it made the throng gawk. "An ounce of prevention would've changed everything if they'd just had it at the bloody outset!" Outside, Gregory put a hand over his mouth at his father's cursing. "If we could've just cured that first vampire… if we could've stopped the plague from spreading…"

Dr. Underwood knelt and placed a compassionate hand on his shoulder. "Believe me, I wish my cure had existed twelve years ago. It would've saved the world a lot of heartache. But it's no use wallowing in that fact now. You can't change the past. You can't go back in time."

You can't go back in time.

Balthazar clenched his fists. He stood up. "Maybe I can, maybe I can't. But I can bloody well try!"

"That's just what I needed to hear!"

The cluster of onlookers parted to allow a man through, an attractive, orange-haired man in a top hat and trench coat.

Balthazar's jaw dropped at the sight of him. How had Balthazar not seen this man before and recognized him immediately?

"D-d-doctor…" he stuttered. "Dr. Zone?"


	11. Chapter 11

Dr. Zone threw his head back in a hearty laugh. "In a sense. The name's Mahlson… Orton Mahlson."

The actor. Of course.

"Mr. Mahlson… what the devil are you doing here?"

Mr. Mahlson smiled wryly. "Same as any of you. Surviving the vampire apocalypse."

"But why are you in this facility? I… I thought Project Marsh was classified?"

"Oh, I have the clearance." Mr. Mahlson reached into his pocket and withdrew a badge. "When it became clear that acting was no longer a viable career for me, due to the fact that most of Hollywood was, well, eaten… I needed something to tie back to my old life, to keep me sane. So as soon as I reached the sanctuary of Danville and saw that the University's archives were open to anyone who might happen by, well, I decided I might as well educate myself and become a real technological genius."

"Cool!" Gregory exclaimed, prompting all eyes to turn on the random kid outside the door. Gregory blushed and put his hands in his pockets.

"It's true. He invented the vampire-repellent bulbs the Security Commission uses to keep us safe," Mr. Block commented.

"And repaired much of the equipment we use right here in this hospital. Including the MRI machine that helped us detect Mr. Draco's progress during the initial case study," Dr. Underwood added.

"Are you the one who installed those new ovens at the bakery that can spit out a churro like every two seconds?" Vinnie asked eagerly.

"I like to think of myself as a jack of all trades," Mr. Mahlson replied proudly.

"You're my hero, man!"

"Say, isn't that the guy we're supposed to be testing?" a skinny, young scientist piped up from the back.

"Oh right," said another, and crossed the room, pushing Balthazar out of the way as the rest crowded around Vinnie, checking his eyes, his throat, his nose. They took a blood sample, and somehow the red fluid in that little vial bothered Balthazar more than it had to see Vinnie's blood gushing out at the warehouse. But on the bright side, the team left shortly thereafter, leaving Balthazar, Vinnie, Mr. Block, Dr. Underwood, and Mr. Mahlson. Gregory also slipped in and sat at the foot of Vinnie's bed.

"Thank goodness they're through," Dr. Underwood breathed. Balthazar felt sympathetic toward her for just a moment until he remembered her verdict on the application of the treatment. He tried to quell the anger he felt rise up again; she was just trying to ration out a limited resource. But rationally or not, he knew he was upset with her, and he would need to distract himself, quickly.

"Now, about this matter you 'needed to hear'," Balthazar questioned Mr. Mahlson.

"Ah! Yes. You see, the city gives me a lot of room for, erm, executive decisions when it comes to my tinkering," Mr. Mahlson explained. "But it's a pet project for me, so I can't seem to get the approval to recruit volunteers for the maiden voyage."

"'Maiden voyage', sir?"

"I'll get to that momentarily. I've been reading more than just library books, you see. Some of the papers from the University's own research have been most intriguing. And around a year ago, I came across one paper in particular that opened up a whole new world for me." He pulled a thick stack of papers out of his coat, papers that were somewhat crumpled and yellowed with age, but Balthazar nevertheless recognized them all too well.

"Time travel!" Balthazar shook his head incredulously.

"No way," Gregory said. He was starting to put the pieces together.

"You… you actually got it to work?" Balthazar asked.

"I think I just might have."

"That's my paper!" Balthazar asserted. "I wrote it over a decade ago, before all this started. And you… you believe in it?"

Mr. Mahlson stared. "More than I can believe I'm standing in a room with the author who inspired me to build a fully-functional time machine! At least… at least, I hope it's fully functional! But as the one who proposed the theory in the first place… Mr. Cavendish, I should allow you the honors!"

"Hold up, hold up," Vinnie protested. "If all you needed was a volunteer subject, how come you haven't tried it yourself already?"

Balthazar and Mr. Mahlson answered at the same time. "'Stable time travel requires a human operator in the time and place from which the subject departed in order to maintain communications between the trans-chronological vehicle and its anchor, to ensure that the subject is not stranded in a reality too disparate from his or her own.'"

Vinnie sat up and hung his legs over the side of his bed. He stared from his fiancé to Mr. Mahlson and back as he wrapped a protective arm around his son. "Hot dog. This… this is real! Balthy, you invented time travel and you… you didn't tell me?" The hurt in his voice was slight, but unbearable.

"I didn't 'invent' time travel, Vinnie," Balthazar explained. "I just formulated some concepts, in the abstract. Mr. Mahlson was the one who put it all together."

"And it's 'all together' in a car I assembled from scrap pieces outside. Just waiting for someone to test drive it. You wouldn't have to go very far, mind you. In fact, it's simpler if you don't."

"So you're saying it might not be safe?" Vinnie questioned.

"Well, everything carries some risk to it," Mr. Mahlson admitted.

"But seeing as we just survived a nest of bloodthirsty wraiths… I would wager that the risks here are far milder," Balthazar told Vinnie.

Mr. Mahlson nodded. "Slightly worse than driving a car, but not by much. On the order of riding a motorcycle, I'd say."

"Even so, I'm coming with you." He looked at Dr. Underwood. "I can do that, right? You said I could go after they finished testing me."

Dr. Underwood shrugged. "I don't really need you for anything else, and you've been restored to full health. Just stay hydrated and don't do anything too strenuous, because you've lost nearly a quart of blood in the last twenty-four hours, but I can't detain you over that. And currently, I have more important matters to work out with the city administration."

"Just don't do anything stupid," Mr. Block warned, "but if this time-machine doohickey works, I want a joyride too."

"And me!" Gregory nearly shouted, prompting a unanimous "No!" from all the adults.

"I'll have Zackery escort him home," Dr. Underwood offered. Balthazar nodded in agreement, and she walked Gregory out of the room while the boy sulked.

"All right then," Mr. Mahlson stated. "Allow me to show you to your vehicle."

"Sounds good," Vinnie answered. "But do I still get my hoagie after we're done?"

Balthazar laughed. "Vinnie, I do think you'll get your sandwich before we're started!"

And, indeed, twenty minutes later that was actually three hours earlier, Vinnie and Balthazar sat on the patio of Vinnie's favorite sub shop, basking in the sun on their skin.

"Welp, it seemed to work okay," Vinnie commented as he tore into his second sandwich.

"Indeed," Balthazar marveled. "It would seem we've opened a lot of doors today after all. Mr. Mahlson's technology carries with it tremendous potential to alter events that should never have occurred."

Vinnie frowned before addressing the elephant in the room. "So does this mean… does this mean we're going back?"

Balthazar swallowed. "I mean… I mean now we have to, don't we? Dr. Underwood only needs to give us a few doses of her cure and we can fix this where and when it started. Assuming the timeline isn't immutable, but according to my model, it shouldn't be."

"And there's only one way to find out for sure," Vinnie commented.

Balthazar nodded. "Only one way."

Vinnie fiddled with the toothpick from his sub. "I have to ask, though. I'm trying to figure this out. So we go back in time to stop the vampire apocalypse, right?"

"Right."

"And so there won't have been an apocalypse. Which means Dr. Underwood won't bother looking for a cure, and we won't be all determined to stop it because we won't know about it. So we won't go back to stop the apocalypse, so it'll happen. So Dr. Underwood will invent the cure and we'll go back in time to stop the vampire apocalypse. And so there won't have been an apocalypse. Which means Dr. Underwood—"

"Yes, yes, I see your point," Balthazar interrupted. "You've identified one of the great paradoxes of time travel. And the thing is… we don't know how it works." He sipped his coffee. "After we fix the vampire apocalypse, there's no telling if we'll return to this reality, or the new one we created. I can't even say for sure that we'll remember fixing it at all, or anything that happened since the initial outbreak. For all I know, one of us could remember it and the other won't. We're looking at a lot of chaos."

Vinnie adjusted his sunglasses. "And that chaos isn't going to stop at the apocalypse either, is it." It wasn't a question.

"Once we open Pandora's box of time travel… no, it's not going to stop. Remember, the time car belongs to Mr. Mahlson, so even if we don't change anything else, he could. Or someone else could. We could slip into a different reality entirely, with more and more time travelers added to the mix. One might have to form a whole bureau dedicated to organizing time travel into some semblance of a logical order."

"Imagine if Mr. Block were to head the whole thing," Vinnie mused. "And Brick and Savannah were our superior officers. Come on, you know they're all kind of stuck up."

"How nightmarish!" They both laughed.

"But before things got too complicated… I think there's something else I'd need to fix. The Mississippi Purchase has to go."

"I understand."

But one question still hung in the air.

"We've got to stay together," Vinnie reasoned. "I mean, we're the first time travelers, right? So however crazy it gets, however many people start having adventures, we'll still be together because we'll both work for this bureau or whatever-it-is."

"That makes sense," Balthazar agreed, but as their eyes locked, he knew the same fear lingered in both their minds.

What if something went wrong and they didn't remember each other? What if they split up and never got back together? What if they made it so that they had never gotten together in the first place?

What if they got together but didn't like each other?

And yet, they must put that worry aside.

Balthazar scooted around to Vinnie's side and wrapped his arms around him. "Stopping the apocalypse is the right thing to do," he admitted. "But you and me? We're also the right thing. We'll find our way back together no matter what."

"You promise?" Vinnie asked.

Balthazar didn't hesitate at all. "I promise that as much as I always believed in time travel, I believe in us even more. And time travel happened. I can't believe anything else."

Vinnie licked the last bit of mayonnaise off of his little finger. "We should probably go back to the present soon," he lamented.

"Not so fast," Balthazar objected. He breathed into his fiancé's ear, which had for some reason always made Vinnie shiver with anticipation. "We know for a fact that if we go back to our house, Gregory won't be home. And in a sense, we've got all the time in the world."


End file.
